About the Lottery

My parents live in Arizona. I live in Washington state. This means every summer my parents have a great excuse to escape the heat and come for a visit. It also means when my mama is in town we hit up 2-3 quilt stores she really likes or, if the timing is just right, we visit many (16 in three days is our record) during the Western Washington Quilt Shop Hop. Side note: check it out. Seriously.

When she is in town and we go to these quilt stores I tend to blow my arts and craft budget for the summer. This was definitely the case the summer of 2012. As my mom and I sat on my bed perusing all of our finds from our most recent quilt store shopping extravaganza, I pulled out my laundry basket of projects to show her various things I had picked up since the last time I had seen her.

We started looking at the newer stuff on top and then digging through the various projects: some quilt kits and cross stitch kits that had never been started; patterns, patterns and more patterns for quilts, cross stitch, clothing items, household goods, etc.; jelly rolls for quilts for my nieces, 1/2 finished quilts I had started 7-8 years ago; 9/10 finished cross stitch projects I had started 15-20 years ago; fabric lovingly set aside for Easter or Christmas decorations, curtains or other projects. The list goes on and on and on seemingly forever.

How does this all relate to my lottery? I'm getting to it!

I confessed to my mom I felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of projects and not sure of where to start. She had the brilliant-GENIUS-idea of creating a lottery system. I sat on the idea for a few weeks and mulled it over in my head. I'm a Stay-At-Home-Mom with two small children. Loving my husband and kids, taking care of the house and trying to keep the blackberries from taking over my yard takes a lot of my time and energy. How could I just start working on all these projects? There are so many other things that need my attention! I knew that sewing and crafting was a way to let my creative side out for a whirl and keep me sane; I had to at least try.

Over the course of a weekend I started to develop the lottery system. Yes, most of it is sewing related, but there are some crafts I would like to attempt. I even went through my Crafts page on Pinterest and picked about 10 that I thought were practical and feasible. With everything on display, I created the lottery.

The rules are simple:

Pick a project

Finish the project to completion

This, of course, doesn't mean that I won't do a random craft/sewing project outside of the lottery here and there-Exhibit A. Sometimes you gotta throw a little seasonal something up in order to brighten up the house and your spirits! What it does mean is that whatever I pick out from the lottery is what I do next. Trust me, there are some quilts in there that I am pretty sure I was on a fabric high when I thought I could accomplish them. But that's also the fun part! Seeing the successes and the failures. Trust me, I do intend to showcase all the failures. This isn't going to be a blog about how everything I create is perfect and wonderful. I guarantee there will be some ugly stuff! And mild cursing.

By my last count there is something close to 65 projects. I started this in the Fall of 2012 and it is now late February 2013 as I write this and I have completed 3 projects and have added 5. So we know that I have a lot of content for a long time!

Lastly, somewhere in the process of creating the lottery the idea to blog about this new system of mine came to mind and here we are. I hope that it inspires you to work on the projects you love and that you will share them with the rest of us!